Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk (born Gennady Vaynerchuk on November 14, 1975) is an American serial entrepreneur, four-time New York Times bestselling author, speaker and internationally recognized internet personality. First known as a leading wine critic who grew his family’s wine business from $3 million to $60 million, Vaynerchuk is best known as a digital marketing and social-media pioneer at the helm of New York-based VaynerMedia and VaynerX. Vaynerchuk is an angel investor or advisor to Uber, Birchbox, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, among others. He is a regular keynote speaker at global entrepreneurship and technology conferences. 2Early life Vaynerchuk was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States in 1978, after the Soviet Union signed the SALT I agreements, which allowed Soviet Jews to leave the country in exchange for American wheat. Gary and eight family members lived in a studio-apartment in Queens, New York. After living in Queens, Vaynerchuk and his family moved to Edison, New Jersey where Vaynerchuk operated a lemonade-stand franchise and earned thousands of dollars on weekends trading baseball cards. At age 14, he joined his family's retail-wine business. Vaynerchuk graduated with a bachelor's degree from Mount Ida College in Newton, Massachusetts in 1998. 2Career 3Wine Library After graduating from college in 1999 Vaynerchuk assumed day-to-day control of his father's Springfield, New Jersey store, Shopper's Discount Liquors. Gary renamed the store to Wine Library, launched sales online and in 2006 started Wine Library TV, a daily webcast covering win